As a founder member of Mystery Women in 1997, promoting Crime Fiction has always been my passion.
Following the closure of Mystery Women, a new group was formed on 30th January 2012 promoting crime fiction.
New reviews are posted daily, but to search for earlier reviews please click on the Mystery People link below and select 'reviews' from the welcome page. This will display an alphabetic option for you to find the review you would like to read

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Monday, 25 July 2011

‘Séance in Sepia’ by Michelle Black

Published by Five Star Publishing, October 2011.
ISBN: 978-1-4328-2548-5

Flynn Keirnan has taken time off from her teaching job to help her father get his second-hand bookshop off the ground. Sorting through a dusty collection of books belonging to a deceased lady, now being sold off by the landlady to cover unpaid rent, Flynn finds tucked in one of the books what is clearly a Victorian photograph.Although the photograph is that of dark haired young women, the transparent faces of two men float above on either side of her. Flynn is fascinated by the photograph which on investigation she discovers to be a ‘spirit’ photograph, which was a claim made by some Victorian spiritualists that they could photograph the dead during a séance. Flynn becomes even more fascinated when she puts it up on the auction house EBay and the bidding rises to $2000.

Intrigued by the photograph Flynn conducts some further investigation and discovers that the people in the photograph were the subjects in a murder trial in Chicago in 1875, when an architect was accused of killing his wife and his best friend - the murder case being dubbed ‘The Free Love Murders.

The story of the 1875 trial is unfolded from trial transcripts and a journal, interspersed with Flynn’s current day investigation of the story behind the photograph, which brings her into contact with several people who have a connection to this piece of history, and also people researching the life of Victoria Woodhull, an American suffragist who was a campaigner for women’s rights in the 19th century.

This is a many faceted work, weaving a real-life character and her beliefs into a credible story of murder, which also has its’ own message for the inhabitants of both centuries.I was captivated by the story, the well-drawn characters, and the insight into The Oneida Community, which was an education in itself. This book is highly recommended.

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Lizzie Hayes

Michelle Black was born in Kansas and studied anthropology in college, then went on to law school where she graduated with honors. In 1993, she moved to Colorado and began to focus on her fiction writing. For three years, she owned a bookstore in Frisco, Colorado, a small town nestled high in the Colorado Rockies. Michelle has written six books, they are describes as books of an electrifying mix of history, mystery and adventure. The titles are:The Second Glass of Absinthe, SolomonSpring, The Book of Light, An Uncommon Enemy, Lightening in a Drought Year and coming this Autumn, Séance in Sepia which features real-life feminist firebrand, Victoria Woodhull as its protagonist.

Michelle loves hearing from readers and hopes they will not be shy about contacting her at www.michelleblack.com

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About Me

From an early age I have been a lover of crime fiction. Discovering like minded people at my first crime conference at St Hilda’s Oxford in 1997, I was delighted when asked to join a new group for the promotion of female crime writers. In 1998 I took over the running of the group, which I did for the next thirteen years.
During that time I organised countless events promoting crime writers and in particular new writers. But apart from the sheer joy of reading, ‘I actually love books, not just the writing, the plot or the characters, but the sheer joy of holding a book has never abated for me. The greatest gift of my life has been the ability to read'.